“When was this?”
“Four or five days ago. She is better, but has said not a word more about it. She is nothing like strong enough, even for so short a journey as to Portishead; but they say change will be the best thing for her, and the coming down into the family would be too sad.”
“Poor thing! Yes indeed,” said Jenny; and feeling universally benevolent, she added, “give her my love,” a thing which so sincere a person could hardly have said a few weeks ago.
Reserve was part of Cecil’s nature, and besides, her father was almost always with her; but when she had been for the first time dressed in crape up to her waist, with the tiniest of caps perched toy-like on the top of her passive head, the sight upset him completely, and muttering, “Good heavens!—a widow at twenty-two!” he hid himself from the sight over some business transactions with Mrs. Poynsett and Miles.
Rosamond seized the opportunity of bringing Julius in to pay his farewell visit, and presently Cecil said, “Julius, I should be much obliged if you would tell me the real facts about this illness.”
“Do,” said Rosamond. “Her half knowledge is most wearing.”
He gently told her what science had pronounced.
“Then it was Pettitt’s well?” she said.
“They tell us that this was the immediate cause of the outbreak; but there would probably have been quite as much fatal illness the first time any infectious disease came in. The whole place was in a shameful state, and you were the only people who tried to mitigate it.”
“And did worse harm, because we would not listen to advice,” said Cecil. “Julius, I have a great deal of money; can’t I do anything now? My father wants me to give a donation to the church as a memorial of him, but, somehow, I don’t feel as if I deserved to do that.”